The present disclosure relates to computer networks, and more specifically, to Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) zoning in a distributed Ethernet switch.
Computer systems often use multiple computers that are coupled together in a common chassis. The computers may be separate servers that are coupled by a common backbone within the chassis. Each server is a pluggable board that includes at least one processor, an on-board memory, and an Input/Output (I/O) interface. Further, the servers may be connected to a switch to expand the capabilities of the servers. For example, the switch may permit the servers to access additional Ethernet networks or Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) slots as well as permit communication between servers in the same or different chassis. In addition, multiple switches may also be combined to create a distributed network switch.
Fibre Channel (FC) can be used to connect these servers and computing resources, including connecting computer systems to storage devices such as storage area network (SAN) devices. Fibre Channel is a high speed medium primarily used for data transfer and storage, but may also be used to connect other devices, servers, printers, etc. Fibre Channel is essentially a serial data channel, often created over fiber optic cabling, that provides a logical bi-directional, point-to-point connection between a host and a device.
Traditional FCoE switches contain a single switch application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) which control all physical ports in each switch. In such an environment, a single zoning table is implemented within the switch ASIC. The zoning table may specify pairs of endpoints, or nodes, which are permitted to communicate with each other. To program zoning updates, the FCDF firmware writes updated zoning table entries to this single table without requiring further processing. However, the standards developed for traditional FCoE switches (such as FC-BB-6 and FC-SW-6) do not provide mechanisms to update the multiple switch ASICs in a distributed Ethernet switch.